[10] They lived in the Madrid district of Buenavista,[11] raised in a very pious ambience marked by Catholic zeal and multiple religious engagements of Puigdollers Vinader.

[34] Puigdollers was nominated juez instructor; he found the defendant guilty[35] and recommended most severe measures, which indeed led to the person in question being fired.

[36] According to some historians, in the early 1930s Puigdollers started to count among “profesores más brillantes” of law in Valencia;[37] on the other hand, he published relatively few works and trailed behind many of his Valencian academic peers.

[43] The years of 1936-1939 mark the pause in Puigdollers’ academic career; at one point he was fired by the Valencian University,[44] but got reinstated once the Nationalists took over the city and formally was employed there until 1940.

Between 1947 and 1951 he headed an internal committee enforcing discipline at the faculties of law and letters; he directed purges aimed at staff deemed non-compliant with the Francoist regime.

[54] Already during his doctoral research Puigdollers focused on philosophy of law, the discipline he pursued for the rest of his life; in his choice he was inspired mostly by Fernando Pérez Bueno.

[68] General accounts present him among key scholars of “pensamiento reaccionario y conservador”[69] or thinkers within “una corriente precisamente tradicional, … habitualmente conservadora y hasta reaccionaria en lo político”.

[95] In 1928 Puigdollers got engaged in peculiar arbitration labor structures of the regime and was appointed member of the local Comité Paritario;[96] the same year he was nominated consejal to the city ayuntamiento.

[102] Following the fall of Primo Puigdollers engaged in the emerging Valencian branch of Unión Monárquica Nacional, a broad Alfonsist conservative party which disintegrated shortly upon advent of the Spanish Republic.

Instead, in the early 1930s he neared a monarchist circle related to the review Acción Española and from its pages sniped against the Republic;[105] his last contribution identified is from 1935.

[120] In late spring of 1936 Puigdollers was among key civilians engaged in anti-Republican conspiracy in the Valencian region; as one of 3 members of Comité de Alzamiento[121] he held talks with the military from UME when arranging preparations for the rising.

[122] His exact whereabouts during the July Coup are unknown, except that he remained in Valencia; following the loyalist triumph Puigdollers went into hiding, in unclear circumstances managed to leave the Republican zone[123] and in early September 1936 he was already in the Nationalist headquarters in Burgos.

[125] Instead, in early 1937 he was recorded among Carlist heavyweights discussing potential merger with Falange Española; in February in the Portuguese Insua he was undecided,[126] but during later talks with Falangist leaders he seemed favorably disposed towards some sort of alliance.

In 1943 as director of Asuntos Ecclesiásticos and unofficial Carlist representative[145] Puigdollers spoke to the US ambassador Hayes; during the conversation he tried to dissociate the Francoist system from Nazism and kept underling its Catholic profile.

[156] However, it is unclear what position he took towards deteriorating relations between the state and the Church, as in the early 1960s the latter started to distance itself from the regime;[157] nothing is known of his opinion about the first draft of the law on religious liberty, promoted by Fernando Castiella and Manuel Fraga in 1964.

[158] His public statements, like the 1964 lecture opening the academic course in Madrid, were perfectly aligned with the official policy; Puigdollers defended the so-called “derecho de presentación” and spoke against revision of the concordat.

[161] In 1938 Puigdollers was re-admitted to official education structures; some scholars claim he kept working in Comisión de Cultura y Enseñanza,[162] the body which was dissolved following formation of the first regular Francoist government.

They claim that CSIC was “principal cover for Opus Dei's assault on higher education”, a vehicle of imposing Catholic doctrine within the Spanish academic structures.

[168] Within this perspective, Puigdollers along scholars like Miguel Sancho Izquierdo, Enrique Luño Peña, José Corts Grau, Francisco Elías de Tejada and Joaquín Ruiz-Gimenez served as a bulwark against the Falangist, Ortega-oriented current in philosophy of law.

[172] They were reportedly bent on getting Don Juan Carlos declared as the future Spanish king and determined not to allow control of the body by another monarchist grouping.

Perturbed by proliferation of books of “un-spoilt Traditionalist thought” and resolute to counter Carlist cultural policy, in 1957 they allegedly blocked Puigdollers’ access to presidency of the Consejo.

[173] In the late 1950s the opusdeistas, led by Laureano López Rodó, prevented also Puigdollers’ rise to president of Insituto de Estudios Jurídicos, where he was promoted by the Carlists.

According to some scholars, his failure to land the job was detrimental to Traditionalist offensive in media, culture and science; they “perdieron las armas para hacer en estos cinco años una docena de catedráticos, que el carlismo necesita”.

[180] Like in case of education, also as prominent official within the Francoist penitentiary system Puigdollers is viewed as an ACNdP man, who together with conde Rodezno, José Agustín Perez del Pulgar and Maximo Cuervo Radigales[181] worked on particular state and Church synergy.

During early Francoism they were the men who “legislaron todo lo relative a la organización de prisiones y además escribieron sobre ello”.

[184] Puigdollers believed that juvenile crime was not the product of social or economic conditions, but resulted mostly from deficiencies in family life; hence, his focus was on enhancing traditional values in the Spanish society.

[187] Upon achieving the regular retirement age in 1965 Puigdollers resigned from his scholarship at Escuela de Estudios Penitenciarios,[188] but his duties at Patronato continued.

However, when implementing and shaping the Francoist order he was an administrator and a propagandist rather than a key decision-maker; he has never hold major posts and one scholar named him a “second-row politician”.

The last term expired in 1967, yet upon reaching the regular retirement age Puigdollers decided to vacate most positions and in 1965 resigned also his Cortes ticket;[193] he turned out to be one of the longest serving members of the Francoist parliament, with 32 successive years in the chamber.

[203] After the Civil War he distanced himself from independent Carlist politics and was not noted as engaged in party structures,[204] though in private he cultivated the Traditionalist link; in the late 1950s he joined Ediciones Montejurra, a newly set Seville-based Carlist publishing house, and at least until the 1960s along with Manuel Senante, Francisco Elías de Tejada, Rafael Gambra and Agustín de Asís Garrote[205] was in its Consejo Asesor.